A Panel of R Educators
June 10, 2025
These slides available at: https://pm0kjp.github.io/rmedicine_2025_education_panel/slides/r_education_panel.html
Panel convener: Joy Payton
Additional Panelists:
We’ll have a few questions to get started but we want to engage with you, so please use chat liberally!
Raymond R. Balise, PhD
Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
learnr and gradethis as well as synchronous online instruction using tools like Zoom and Posit.Cloud.Silvia Canelón, PhD
Data scientist at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Justice & independent data journalist
Formal training in biomedical engineering, using biomedical and spatial data science in clinical research
Currently working on an accountability journalism project (stay tuned!)
Passionate about data literacy, communication, and accessibility
Lately, I provide informal education and mentorship to other researchers on equity considerations in data visualization 📊
Meghan Santiago Harris, MPH
Data Scientist at the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium
Author of The Tidy Trekker Website and Blog
Self-taught data scientist and R package developer with a formal educational background in Public Health and Epidemiology.
Currently a Public Health/Data Science mentor at The University At Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions for undergraduate students.
Favorite method of “instruction” is written articles/walkthroughs and talks of all kinds.
Ted Laderas, PhD
Joy Payton, MS
(For 2 more weeks) Manager of Data Education, Arcus Initiative, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Vibe coding and using LLMs to write code is enjoying a lot of press these days. Is it still necessary to teach people to write R code, and if so, how much?
The title of this panel mentions “interesting times”. What is making your work as an educator particularly interesting these days, whether that’s good or bad?
What are some of the tools and methods you find most effective to get people to use their skills and retain their use?